How she used to have a father, but doesn't anymore
by aperfectsong
Summary: Kagome decides whether or not to go home. Won 1st at iyficcontest week 120 for A shoulder to cry on.


How she used to have a father, but doesn't anymore

(Won first iyficcontest on lj for "a shoulder to cry on")

_I should go back_, Kagome thought to herself. But she didn't have any tests to study for and she didn't need any more supplies. She had just gone home a few days earlier for a math exam and noticed the date on the calendar just by accident, really.

_But maybe it'd be better to stay_. She couldn't think of a suitable excuse for Inuyasha, except possibly that she had another exam, if he would even believe that, if he even remembered she had had a geometry exam the week before.

_I__ don't know._ She tapped her fingers lightly on his back and sighed.

"What?" he growled, a little too harshly. She opened her eyes at his gruff voice and realized that she was still riding on his back. They had spent the day chasing a Shikon shard rumor that just turned out to be a group of snake youkai and were now on their way back to Kaede's village.

"Huh?" she said and then realized the tapping. "Gomen ne Inuyasha. I didn't realize I was doing it."

"Feh."

She heard Sango and Miroku talking quietly about the snake youkai, but when the wind picked up and their voices became muffled, she retreated back to her thoughts. She pictured the calendar again and focused on the way that the day wasn't marked by anything—but why would they mark it? You wouldn't mark it the way you would mark birthdays or the start of the New Year or Saint White's day. Unlike the rest of the calendar, November 12th was blank—characterized by a lack of appointments, a lack of plans.

_I have to go home._

It was just through the well, a short distance from Kaede's village. The Sengoku Jidai was just a place: the countryside, just without air conditioning, warm baths, and electricity. A simple jump down the well – thirty seconds was all it took to return to the city. At least, that's the way she thought of it when she didn't really think about it.

Still, she remembered when a trip to the countryside used to mean much longer journey. She remembered when she was small, when she would run through a grassy field far from Tokyo wearing little white shoes; she remembered being passed between her parents when her own chubby legs were too tired to carry her; she remembered—barely—holding each of their hands and squeezing them tightly with her short fingers. She later realized on Souta's first trip to the countryside that they weren't there to visit the soft grass that seemed to her a green playground, but a house, and more importantly, the people inside it.

"Come inside, Kagome-chan," her grandfather would call. She would grab fistfuls of the grass and carry them in the pockets of her kimono before allowing him to grab her hand and lead her inside. "Let's show Souta your otou-san's old room."

"Hai," she would say, but within a few minutes, her dad would find her running outside around the grass again. She'd run in circles with him chasing behind her until her energy ran out and she fell to the ground shrieking with laughter.

"Kagome-chan, you're getting faster every time we come to see your grandparents. What's going to happen when I can't catch you anymore? How will we get you to come inside then?"

Grabbing his hands, she's always answer, "You'll always catch me, otou-san," and he'd lift her up and carry her into the house on his back.

When Souta was older, her father would watch his two children playing in the green grass and remember his childhood. With the whole family gathered around, he'd tell stories about how there used to be more trees when he was younger and Kagome wouldn't believe him.

"It looked the same last time we came," she said. She remembered her father's quiet chuckle, even though at five she couldn't understand why he was laughing. She even remembered way the skin on her grandmother's face formed creases as she laughed, and the feel of her grandfather's callused hand patting her head, and Souta's overexcited giggling, and the happy smile on her mother's face. She remembers laughing then too, just because she was so happy to be with her family.

When she came back to the city—home—she'd sit with her father under the Goshinboku, thinking about how at home, the leaves just didn't seem green enough.

She quietly thought of this, back in the Sengoku Jidai with her legs held tightly by Inuyasha's warm hands. When she closed her eyes, she could almost hear her father laugh and Souta cry, "My turn."

But when they reached the village, something hurriedly sent her retrospective thoughts to the back of her mind.

"Inuyasha, I sense a shard," she murmured. "Sango-san, Miroku-sama, there's a shard approaching the village from the woods by the Goshinboku."

"Only one, Kagome-sama?" the monk asked as Kirara sped up next to Inuyasha.

"Hai," she said.

"Then what are you all waiting for?" Inuyasha said and sped off. She closed her eyes to avoid the dizziness brought by the images of blurred trees and instead concentrated on the slight pull of the shard.

As they approached the Goshinboku, she saw a bird youkai holding an unconscious girl in its beak. Kagome immediately recognized her as Amaya, a village girl who Miroku had groped on more than one occasion. On their arrival, the group of villagers who had been fighting for her life stepped aside.

"You bastard, let her go," Inuyasha growled as he set Kagome on the ground. "Your fight is with me."

The youkai, however, simply batted its wings, causing a gust of wind to blow that sent a few villagers flying.

"Inuyasha, the shard's in its forehead," Kagome shouted before running over to some of the injured villagers to pull them further away from the battle.

Inuyasha quickly unsheathed Tetsusaiga and launched an attack at its chest.

"Temee," he growled. "Let the girl go so we can have a real fight."

"Hiraikotsu," Sango shouted as she hurled her weapon at the beast's chest. Kirara flew closer so Miroku could throw his ofuda at the bird youkai. Once they reached their target, Kirara backed away and narrowly avoided being swiped by its claws.

The bird flapped its wings again and Kagome quickly jumped and pressed herself flat against the earth. "Get down like this," she shouted to the villagers. Obediently, the ones who didn't get blown away in the first gust followed Kagome's advice.

She stayed on the ground, with her head pressed against the ground until she heard the demon-exterminator shout, "Move out of the way, Kagome-chan!"

Obediently, she opened her eyes and rolled out of the direction of the bird youkai's claws. She just wasn't fast enough. She bit down hard on her lip as one of its claws dug a hole in her upper thigh.

"KAGOME!" Inuyasha shouted and swooped down to pick her up in one fluid motion. He placed her on the ground near Miroku and muttered, "Stay here," before jumping off to join Sango.

When she looked down at her leg, she felt a little lightheaded when she saw the blood rushing out of her open wound, so she laid her head back on the grass and groaned. Still, she silently thanked her luck for providing her with an excuse to return home; even though it was one that he mother would certainly worry over.

"Are you alright, Kagome-sama?" Miroku asked as he approached her. "Do you need some help with your wound?"

"No thank you, Miroku-sama. I'm fine," she said, really thinking that there was no way she would ever let the monk tend to a wound that he would have to remove her skirt to see.

"Are you sure, Kagome-sama? You look ill."

"N—no, I'm fine. I'm great, actually." She attempted to sit up to prove it to him and she nearly blacked out at the movement of her head, but she breathed deeply, calmly, and held her weight up with her arms; she stayed conscious.

When the fight was over, Inuyasha lifted her and carried her to the dead carcass so she could remove the shard from the demon's chest. The scent of it nearly made her vomit, but she managed to hold it back by breathing through her mouth instead. She put the shard in the bottle around her neck immediately and Inuyasha carried her in his arms like fathers do their children and she felt asleep snuggled against his chest, barely noticing the pain in her leg.

As she dreamt, she remembered being small enough for her father to carry through the shrine and the way he would coddle her and sing to her when she couldn't sleep.

She remembered her seventh birthday.

"Kagome-chan," her mother called. "Go put on your birthday dress."

"I don't want to!" she shouted stubbornly, in the way that's common to both seven-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds. Her father sick, so she couldn't have a real birthday party with her friends from school, like all the other girls her age did. Instead, her grandparents were coming over from the country.

"Higurashi Kagome! Now!"

"You better do as she says, Kagome-chan," her father said from his place on the couch. The stubborn girl with her arms crossed over her chest didn't answer, but went off to her room to change out of her school uniform silently.

"Arigato," her mother said when she felt Kagome was out of hearing range. She wasn't. She heard her mother's footsteps as she approached the couch her father was sprawled across and sat down. "I'll miss you," she said.

Kagome couldn't decipher the whispers exchanged between her parents, not even when she reentered the room, wearing her pink birthday dress. They spoke too quietly for her to hear, but she did notice the tears in her mother's eyes as she excused herself from the room.

At seven, she wished she had understood what they were saying, simply for the sake of eavesdropping, but at fifteen, she wished she understood how her mother could keep everything hidden, right up until the end. She wished she knew how the woman could bare it all without falling apart in front of her family. She wished she knew how she could bare it now, years later, without…

"Kagome. Hey, Kagome. Get up! The old woman wants to check your wound." She woke to his gruff voice, to the vibrations of his chest against her cheek.

"Okay," she mumbled as he laid her down on the floor of Kaede-sama's hut.

Her wound was quickly tended to under Inuyasha's watchful eye, but not without a few chiding marks from the old miko to the hanyo. Kagome didn't notice it much; she still focused on her mental image of the calendar and the sterility the space beneath November 12th.

She rested for a few moments and began to gather her things – she was going _home_. Maybe just for _this_ day, she knew where to find her it. She said goodbye to her friends and headed for the well, but Inuyasha followed her.

She knew then that she wasn't going to tell him why she was leaving (because she wasn't the only or even the last of their group to lose her father.) She was just the only one with a blank calendar to remember the date by, the only one with a family to comfort and be comforted by, the only one with photographs and videos to remember _him_ by, the only one who could remember in detail the months before he got sick, died, left them.

"I'm going home," she said quietly. The intensity of her voice caused Inuyasha's ears to flatten against his head; he seemed to understand that she wasn't asking for permission. She turned on him slowly and stumbled awkwardly to the well, trying not to let him see the pain in her right leg, even though she knew he could smell the blood and maybe even see it where it seeped through the bandage on her leg.

She lowered herself in slowly and before the scenery above her changed, she could see his face staring down at her, watching her disappear when she reached the bottom.

As she reached the other side, she climbed out of the well slowly and dropped her backpack down on the floor of the well house. She winced as she rewrapped her wound quickly, tighter than Kaede-sama had the strength to and changed out of her bloody skirt, into one her mother had packed for her.

Taking a deep breath, she walked to the Goshinboku, where her tears overcame her.

She still remembered being fourteen and finding out that she didn't have a father anymore. She still remembered sitting beneath the tree's branches then, crying into her own arms late at night, almost feeling her father's silhouette pulling her close and resting her head on his shoulder.

She wiped her eyes and carried her own tired body into the house, into the living room where her grandfather, her brother, and her mother sat waiting for her. Higurashi Kagome sat down next to her mother and squeezed her hand. Her mother squeezed back. Their eyes met and Kagome understood.

For her mother, no spirit's shadow would ever be enough: too iridescent, too thin, too weak, too unreal; and her mother was strong enough to use her own shoulder.


End file.
